"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
It been about a year and a half since I started building my Core i5 PC. It is almost finished (for a while). Yesterday I decided to tear it apart to clean it and address some things I wanted to change. I took everything out but the motherboard, CPU cooler, and PSU + cables. My PSU is non-modular so cable management needs special care.
I cleaned everything with a toothbrush and then the air blaster. I had Corsair white LED fans that I had tinted the blades orange with a Sharpie. That worked well but I had some bright orange paint to coat the blades now. They light up in an orange Creamsicle color. I hate the color silver and could not live with seeing silver 5-1/4" drive rails so I painted the hot-swap bays red and the DVD black.
I installed a multi card reader that I found, using a broken hot-swap bay as a drive bracket. In order to plug in the card reader I installed an internal powered USB hub. It has 3 headers and 2 USB type A plugs. I had to re-do much of the cable management on the back. I use black twisty-ties, a lot of them. I have so many extra wires that I run them all over the case to get them out of the way, and tie them off to other cables.
I am very happy that I found the ferrule and zip-tie that I needed to separate the PCI-GPU power cables. I noticed that the cables formed an X, so I wanted to enhance that look by forcing them apart rather than bundling them together.
be quiet! Silent Base 800 case bones, hot-swap bays and USB hub. II had to paint the fans while still attached to the case because I didn't want to untie 100 twisty-ties to get them loose.
Corsair AF120 top fans with white LEDs and blades painted Orange.
Looking at the bottom fan. Noctua NF-A14. Notice how the 5-1/4" drive rails show red through the black holes.
It matches the red & black look of the CPU cooler.
Look front towards the back. Painted the Thermalright fan and heatsink sides red. Painted DVD brackets and bottom Noctua fan. The PSU has been painted dark gray.
I had to use what I call the "Surgical Field" technique. I put the whole PC in a plastic garbage bag and cut small slits over the areas to be painted. Then I taped around the slits to paint the DVD brackets (non-removable) and PSU (too lazy to remove).
Looking up at top fans and lighting. All the LEDs are white lighting that has been tinted orange. I got automotive turn signal repair tape (yellow) and colored it with an orange Sharpie, then covered the Sharpie with tape. I used that method on the case LED's, the MSI logo on the GPU and the fans. It works really well and I am sure it will work for other colors. I re-stuck the light strip with double sided tape. The light strip is kind of dim but that is how I like it.
Hot-Swap bays. i_Star_USA in center.
Top case, this is my front view. I got a custom cut heavy duty tempered table glass so I can put my monitor on the top side of the case.
Glass top from front side.
On the bottom I used guitar amp feet = much cheaper than PC feet.
Cable management. Yes believe me, these are managed - you should have seen it before! My old 700W has a lot of useless MOLEX connectors. I rerouted my SATA cables so C:/ Windows > drive 0, D:/ Stuff > drive 1, E:/ Backup > drive 2, etc...
Next month I plan to get a Zotac Sonix 480 GB PCIe SSD, and paint it black and red.
After that I would like a i7-4790K when I can find a deal. I won't paint the Intel CPU.
